Ionizing radiation

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What is Ionizing Radiation?

Introduction - Waves and Particles

The purpose of this section is to provide information on the basics of ionizing radiation for everyone.

Energy emitted from a source is generally referred to as radiation. Examples include heat or light from the sun, microwaves from an oven, X rays from an X-ray tube, and gamma rays from radioactive elements

Ionizing Radiation

Ionizing radiation is radiation with enough energy so that during an interaction with an atom, it can remove tightly bound electrons from the orbit of an atom, causing the atom to become charged or ionized.

Forms of electromagnetic radiation. These differ only in frequency and wave length.

Heat waves

Radiowaves

Infrared light

Visible light

Ultraviolet light

X rays

Gamma rays

Longer wave length, lower frequency waves (heat and radio) have less energy than shorter wave length, higher frequency waves (X and gamma rays). Not all electromagnetic (EM) radiation is ionizing. Only the high frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum which includes X rays and gamma rays is ionizing.

Waves

Most of the more familiar types of electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light, radio waves) exhibit “wave-like” behavior in their interaction with matter (e.g. diffraction patterns, transmission and detection of radio signals). The best way to think of electromagnetic radiation is a wave packet called a photon. Photons are chargeless bundles of energy that travel in a vacuum at the velocity of light, which is 300 000 km/sec.

Particulate

Specific forms of ionizing radiation: Particulate radiation, consisting of atomic or subatomic particles (electrons, protons, etc.) which carry energy in the form of kinetic energy or mass in motion.

Electromagnetic radiation, in which energy is carried by oscillating electrical and magnetic fields traveling through space at the speed of light.

Alpha particles and beta particles are considered directly ionizing because they carry a charge and can, therefore, interact directly with atomic electrons through coulombic forces (i.e. like charges repel each other; opposite charges attract each other).

The neutron is an indirectly ionizing particle. It is indirectly ionizing because it does not carry an electrical charge. Ionization is caused by charged particles, which are produced during collisions with atomic nuclei.

The third type of ionizing radiation includes gamma and X rays, which are electromagnetic, indirectly ionizing radiation. These are indirectly ionizing because they are electrically neutral (as are all electromagnetic radiations) and do not interact with atomic electrons through coulombic forces.